The New Avatar
by FanFantasyWriter
Summary: Over 60 years have passed since Aang ended the war but one night he and half of his remaining family will die. Could his great granddaughter be his next life? How do you protect the world's peac when you cant even help your own loved ones?
1. IN THE END

_It was freezing, even for a winter night in the South Pole this was cold. Kia hugged herself against the winds and shuddered at the thought of them. They were proof of just how far her father had fallen. Back when he'd still been strong, the air itself had always seemed calmer and lighter with him around. This night could very well turn out both a blessing and a tragedy. At the North end of the village, Kia's daughter was about to make her a Grangran, but at the south end her father could very well be dying. Sixty-one years had passed since her father had ended the Great War and supposedly, he had lived for one-hundred years before that. That is, if you could call being trapped in an iceberg living. She was at her parents' house now. Her mother's blue eyes were empty with hopelessness. She followed Katara's eyes to see what she saw. Had Aang's skin had that grayish tint to it yesterday? Suddenly Kia was no longer the brave old woman she'd grown up to be but the scared, childish, little girl she had been each time her father had left without her to help keep the peace. Her hand felt through the darkness beneath the thick blankets for her father's hand. It was abnormally cold but there was still a pulse there. She watched his chest rise and fall with each breath and about an hour later, it finally ceased. Katara tried to wake him and when she nearly passed out because she couldn't Kia caught her. They cried for him together before Kia finally decided to check on her daughter. When she arrived, the Water Sages informed her that her new granddaughter was fine but that her daughter had died in childbirth. That was when Katara walked in. She insisted on taking the little girl. Kia tried to convince her mother otherwise but she just kept saying over and over, "Your father would have wanted it this way", there was no arguing with her anymore. _

_Two whole years passed and Kia herself died. Katara soon was the only family Aurora had left. Appa was still around but it had been clear over the last few years that he didn't want to be. Katara had to force him to eat. That all changed when Aurora learned to walk. She stepped outside the house and Appa acted like Aang had just come back from the dead. Katara wondered… after all water was the next element in the cycle… and Aurora was born the night of Aang's death… could she be…? It was possible but the part of Katara that still remembered those rough early days hoped not… _


	2. THEW NEW BEGINNING

11 more years followed and gradually Katara found that Aurora was saving her from herself. Going on without Aang was hard but Aurora needed her… that simple fact kept her going. It turned out that She was a bender (more evidence toward her being the new Avatar though Katara refused to let herself see that) Katara trained her and now they were almost equally matched in their skills. It would not be long before this student finally surpassed her master.

"You're doing well Aurora," Katara said when they stopped for a moment.

"Just you wait Gran! Someday I'll beat you!" The girl said confidently.

The house they lived in now on Wale Tail Island was small but still bigger than anything back home. It had five rooms that all had white walls and bamboo floors.

When Sokka came to see them a month later Aurora left and decided to go see a friend of hers. (Katara conveniently allowed it since the water sages would be in town, all the better to keep them away from her.) Of course Aurora had no idea what she was doing but Sokka wasn't fooled.

"You know you can't protect her forever." He told his sister solemnly.

"Do you know why Aang ran away from the temple in the old days? Did he ever tell you?" She asked. Katara's hands were shaking now. She hardly ever mentioned his name anymore if she could help it. It hurt too much.

"NO!" Sokka yelled too loudly for the small dining room.

"It was because the monks told him too early, he couldn't deal with it and his friends there were too stupid to figure out that he was the same person. The monks' ambitions and his friends' immaturity drove him away. I looked it up, no single Avatar before him knew who they were until they were sixteen. Aurora won't either if I can help it; I don't want that for her! Unlike the sages, I love her more than anything. She's all I have left, do you understand that Sokka?!"

"Alright Sis I get it. Now will you please calm down before you give yourself a heart attack? Aurora is just barely thirteen right? So that should give her three more years. I understand that you only want what's best for her, I do too. But you have to face it that someday they are going to come for her."

"I hope I'm already dead when that day comes." She replied pointedly.

"Come on Katara, don't be like that. When that day does come she's going to need you to help her make sense of everything and you know it."

What Katara and Aurora hadn't noticed was that there was a storm coming. Soon flying would become a very bad idea. Aurora never made it passed the shoreline. Instead she came home, the water sages were only ten minutes behind her.

When they knocked on the door it was Sokka who answered. Though instead of chasing them away as one look at Katara's face would have told him she wanted him to do, he bowed respectively and let them into his sister's home.

Katara glared at them from her place at the low, square table. Aurora was just downright confused.

"Aurora," the lead sage said, "It is time you carried your great-grandfather's legacy. It is our honor to serve you, Avatar Aurora."

Aurora stopped short and her mind began to race. What was this man talking about? Could he even hear himself? Yes, she was the great-grandchild of the previous Avatar and yes, she was a waterbender but what did any of that prove?

Finally, she gained enough control to speak. "No, with all due respect I believe you must have the wrong person."

"No child, we have watched you since you were born. We were watching for Watertribe infants who could be the avatar since before Avatar Aang's death. Only your birth coincided with that tragedy so closely. From then on, you were our focus, the prime suspect if you will. It was actually when Aang's bison recognized you that we were convinced."

Aurora couldn't take it anymore. She ran to her room forcing tears back. Katara stood, watched her go, and gave the sages a deadly stare. "I think you lot have done enough damage here if you don't mind. Please leave my home now and don't expect me to let you back in!" The sages backed away through the door and Katara slammed it shut behind them.

Sokka rose to his feet, Katara grabbed him by the arm. "Make sure they don't come back. I'm going to go talk to Aurora."

"Alright," he said. Even after all these years Sokka still never left without a weapon. Aurora's tears had upset him; Katara never really had to ask.

Katara found Aurora in her room but it was locked. "Aurora I know you're upset, please open this door so that we can talk Sweetie."

Aurora rose from where she had been crying on the bed and unlocked the door. She sat back down and Katara followed, sitting down next to her. The old woman put her arm around her. Aurora found herself resting her head on Katara's shoulder, since she was little she had always felt safe this way.

Suddenly she pulled away and asked. "Did you know?"

"Aurora… I always knew it was possible… but that doesn't mean I always _knew." _

"How do they expect me to do this? I'm only thirteen and all I know is waterbending! How can I protect the world's peace? Suddenly Aurora found the old painting if Aang that hung on her wall and pointed at it angrily. "Why isn't he here?"

"darling I have asked myself that question everyday for the last thirteen years. You _can_ do this. You're more like him then you know, maybe someday you'll come to see just how much."


	3. PAINFUL MEMORIES

Aurora's waterbending training quickly accelerated. She sparred with Gran almost every single day until she was truly Katara's equal. She threw her whole self into it. However when she was alone she was haunted. They were some of her earliest memories…

_The house is dark. Aurora is supposed to be asleep but she hears something. It sounds like someone crying. She walks carefully down the hall so that she won't be heard and sent back to bed. She sticks her head around the corner. Gran is still there, in the rocker by the stone fireplace. She's holding a strange-looking necklace, clutching it for dear life. It is a string of wooden beads and a large round wooden pendant marked with swirls. Gran's eyes are large and bloodshot with tears. Suddenly the sobs begin again and Aurora is tortured by the sound of it. She can't take watching Gran be so upset this way so she turns and runs. She rushes back to her safe warm bed. It is very inconceivable but she is haunted by the notion that somehow Gran's pain is her doing. How can that be? _

She buries head in her pillow and cries herself. _I used to hear her cry at night… she misses him… I'm the new Avatar… what if he died because I was born? If that's true then Gran's pain and loneliness is my fault… my fault… I don't deserve her. _

These thoughts consume her. She thinks she doesn't deserve what little family she has ever known. Gran raised her since that awful night like her own daughter, no doubt just as she did to Aurora's grandmother and her siblings.

Aurora scanned the many bookshelves in the living room, hoping all the while that Gran had not gotten rid of the one she was looking for when they'd moved. She knew that Avatar Aang had written a history of the last nine months or so of the war. It was from his point of view and she wanted someway to get inside his head.

_Please tell me Gran didn't throw it out!!! _Finally she found what she sought, it was an old tome with a woven cover and rough looking paper. She scanned the first few pages. _This is even better than I thought! It goes all the way back to when they told him! _ At that moment Gran walked into the room. Ever since the water sages had come Gran had looked tired.

Out of fear of hurting Gran with painful memories and guilt at sneaking around Aurora closed the book and tried to hide it behind her back.

"You can have that dear, It gives you information that I understand you need." She paused and her expression turned to one of concern. "I know what you've been thinking since you found out. You're wrong." She said flatly.

"What do you mean Gran? I'm fine. I'm doing ok, I really am… I mean it."

"You don't lie very well dear; you're just like him in that way."

"But I'm not lying!" She said.

"I raised five children, was married for over fifty-six years, and grew up with an older brother Aurora; you can't fool me unless you can keep a straight face when you lie. You can't."

"Gran!" Aurora exclaimed in an exasperated voice.

"Don't Gran me child. You know I can tell." She said. "You blame yourself for what happened that night. Just because you are destined to take his place in, the world doesn't mean that you caused his death. You did nothing to bring that. Perhaps you should know what really happened to him, recalling those last days will be painful but maybe then, you will understand.

_It began nearly two years before it killed him. He began to slow and he became sick much more easily than before. I thought that it was just his age; he was seventy-one not counting the ice-burg years. I always healed him but after awhile, I began to sense every time that there was a deeper problem going on. Even as he became more and more ill, he never wanted to let it stop him from anything. So long as he had, no noticeable fever things went on as they had been. I worried for him and I know that that made him even more determined to stay strong, or at least… make it seem that way to me. That worried me even more. Soon he was almost forced to give in to it. Nothing I, or ant of the other healers did helped. He needed medicine if any existed. So our children and grandchildren gathered. They scattered to the four winds and across the world searching for away to save him. That was how your mother and father met. He was the son of an herbalist and a baker. She thought he might have an answer for us but she ended up falling in love with him. When she left, he gave her his peoples' most powerful herb. She promised that she would return and marry him. Once she and the others arrived home we tried everything and every combination of everything. Nothing helped. Your mother wanted to return to her lover but she knew she was pregnant with you and the pregnant women do not travel. At this time, Aang was slipping but he was still with me, still my husband. Then an onslaught of fevers made him too weak to get out of bed or speak. The morning before he died he was almost entirely gone, but he found the strength to reach for my hand, pull it against his face and mouth the words, "I love you" it was the last time I heard whatever weak shadow of his voice remained. He would not awake again. So you see… none of this was your fault. It was mine. I should have seen what was happening… if I had grasped just how sick he was sooner than maybe… maybe something could have been done. I loved him. I still love him but I love you too. You didn't end his life at all. If anything, you saved mine after the fact. You gave me a reason to go on." _

By the time Katara was finished, she and Aurora were both in tears. Maybe somewhere along Aurora's connection to her past lives Aang was weeping too. Her great-grandfather had been stolen by an unnamed sickness and not her existence she understood that now.


End file.
